How long does it take Google to rank my website?

There’s one thing that every small business owner wants to understand when they start investing in SEO. “How long does it take to start ranking in Google”

We hear it all the time from our clients and we understand that it can be frustrating when things don’t happen quickly. But the truth is that rankings don’t happen overnight. The time it takes to rank in Google can vary massively depending on your website and the competitiveness of a keyword, but most experts agree that it takes between three to six months to see any movement.

If you are a brand new company with a fresh web presence, it can take even longer. We understand that it is hugely frustrating for business owners not to see immediate results, but that doesn’t happen with Google. The only way that is possible is by cheating the system using Blackhat SEO. Unfortunately, those kinds of tactics will destroy your presence in the long run.

So you can better understand why it takes so long to rank in Google, we’ll discuss how the search giant works below.

How does Google find your site?

Google uses bots to crawl billions of web pages every day. It then uses the data it collects to build its index, which it uses to create search results.

The first step to being ranked by Google is to be found by Google. Luckily, you can submit your website manually to Google using Google’s Search Console. Once your website is in the index, Google will continue to crawl it periodically to ensure its index remains relevant.

How does Google rank websites?

Believe it or not, Google serves up personalized results from their index for every search. This is because Google wants to make sure that their results best match your query. That means one searcher in one part of the country may see different results to a searcher in another part of the country.

Google uses hundreds of factors to decide where your website should appear in results. Here are some of the most important:

Your SEO

The more you have optimized your webpage for a certain phrase or keyword, the more likely it is to appear in the results. When everyone is optimizing their websites, it’s even more important to make sure yours is competitive.

Your site’s age

The older a website, the more authority Google gives it, everything being equal. That’s because older websites have stood the test of time. It can take six months for a brand new website to start seeing results in Google.

The competitiveness of keywords

The more competitive a keyword, the less chance you have of showing up for it. That’s simply because there are more websites trying to rank for it. The more websites trying to rank, the bigger the likelihood of there being more authoritative sites than yours.

The number of backlinks you have

Google loves backlinks. It uses them as a sign that your website is trusted by other websites. Therefore, the more high-quality backlinks you have, the better.